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Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Batman Beyond #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Back To The Future

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

We've seen it all and done it all. We've traveled to Five Years From Now and even Thirty Five Years From Now, We've crossed the bleed and watched a world die, only to see it be reborn from a Convergence and you know what? It's all led to this. That's right, Batman Beyond in all it's former glory is presented anew as Tim Drake was hurtled into a future that shouldn't have been and here we see what he's going to do to change it. Man, that was pretty serious, wasn't it? We continue our tale from where Futures End left off and for all my bitching and complaining, this is the future we get and now we get to see what actual changes Tim made by preventing the Earth-2 refugees from coming to Earth-0. It's a brave new world and hopefully, it's one we'll enjoy. Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our story begins with a little cold opener, where we see that in this altered future, Gotham has been relatively unharmed by Brother Eye's siege on the planet, due to a device known as the veil, that acts as a digital cloaking device, leaving Brother Eye blind to Gotham. Pretty cool right? Well, a few Jokerz figure that Gotham isn't worth saving and break into the Wayne Powers building, where the device is kept and if Tim hadn't sprung into action, acclimating himself to the state of affairs Thirty Five Years From Now, Gotham would have been in a heap of trouble. Our hero prevailed though and took out the Jokerz and reconnected the veil just in time. After the excitement we get our first tidbit on how the future has changed because originally Gotham was ravaged by Brother Eye and to get itself back on the trolley, Batman Beyond's A.I. Alfred is collecting all sorts of data in order to reconfigure his knowledge on what's been going down. That's right, just like Johnny 5, Alfred needs input and to do that, Tim goes to the only people he really knows in this future and visits Terry's brother Matt and his guardian Nora.

After getting some information about a place called "The Lodge", where Terry's friends might have been taken....... and us finding out that Matt is really jealous of Tim having the Batman suit, our hero flies off to do some good in the world and free the oppressed people of the future. Tim travels to New York, which looks like the Great Disaster has already happened and finds the mysterious Lodge, but before he could go all Moses and yell out "Let My People Go!", he's confronted by a Brother Eye-ed Borged out Superman and if Alfred hadn't set off a gigantic EMP, Batman Beyond would have been toast.......... It's about at this point of the book I just want to start calling Alfred, Ziggy......You know, from Quantum Leap.......... Get on the trolley, it's only the best television show ever!

In the end, the EMP blasts Superman away, but it also shuts down Alfred aka Ziggy, which means the suit gets shut down too. So with no other options, Tim decides that he's going to enter The Lodge incognito, but he isn't welcomed with open arms. It seems that the people of The Lodge like to shake down new folks for any tech they might have and again, it looked like Tim would have been toast if someone hadn't of saved him and this time in comes in the form of an elderly Barbara Gordon, who recognizes Tim and gets her muscle to let him go.

That's it for our first issue of the all new Batman Beyond and even though I had my trepidations going in because this wasn't the Batman Beyond that I knew or even wanted, there's a real chance that this could be a really interesting title. Yeah, some wonky shit on the cover showing The Great Disaster and The Atomic Knights, which I hope don't become featured in this series, but as of right now, I'm pretty intrigued. It's just that this title can become anything it wants to because it's not bound by any continuity besides for things we've seen in Futures End and even some of that's been rewritten because of Tim Drake preventing the Earth-2 Wonders from coming to that Universe.......This probably all sounds like nonsense if you didn't read Futures End or World's End, but don't worry because it all kind of makes sense. I dug the art and think that it really works for this title and even though I don't think this future should exist, I'll go with it and trust that Dan Jurgens has something cool to tell us.

Bits and Pieces:

I was really worried about this title, but after reading this first issue, I can honestly say that I'm interested to see where it's going. Really, I think I'm just looking for Tim to put the final beat down on Brother Eye so I can get a real ending to Futures End, but beyond that, this could be a really fun, interesting series. The art really worked for this story and by the end I was pleasantly surprised at how much I got into this issue. Go check it out, but please go in without any hangups on what you think Batman Beyond should be.

You have me curious (especially with the Quantum Leap reference; I loved that show). Still really hope they revive the Terry/Bruce world, too, but this sounds like another wonderful way of having fun and exploring the Beyond world, which as you said is not hobbled down by tons of continuity issues.

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